


Control

by thisdarkpassenger



Category: SKAM (Spain)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Fluff, Light Angst, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:28:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24714610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisdarkpassenger/pseuds/thisdarkpassenger
Summary: Cris seems to have all the control in the world. Joana doesn't seem to have enough.The first time Joana notices Cris outside of the club, her own magic has a hold on her so tight, she has to sit down in an attempt to control it again.Still, she cannot stop looking at Cris.
Relationships: Cris Soto/Joana Bianchi
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31





	Control

**Author's Note:**

> :)

On purple grass, Joana learns that Cris carries her magic in the tips of her fingers. It’s only the second time that they’re lying beneath the stars, talking in hushed voices. The only thing that breaks the silence is the laughter that escapes them sometimes; too loud to fit anywhere properly.

Then, Cris’s fingers brush against Joana’s arm, shocking her with the flash of energy that rushes through her suddenly. Cris pulls her hand away in an instant, leaving only the phantom touch of something hot.

“Sorry,” she whispers, even quieter than before.

“Your magic is so –“ Joana searches for words in Cris’s eyes.

Cris looks away. Joana wants to reach out and touch her again, but she’s not sure yet if Cris has her magic under control, if it’s back where it should be, and she doesn’t want to startle her.

“It’s strange” Cris says finally.

“No.” That’s definitely not the word Joana was searching for. Everything but that.

Cris looks at her again, her eyes narrowed, waiting for Joana to say something else. Anything else. For once in her entire life, Joana has no idea what to say. Instead she smiles at Cris, wide and honest.

After a moment, Cris smiles back. Slightly, more cautious, possibly.

The first time Joana notices Cris outside of the club, her own magic has a hold on her so tight, she has to sit down in an attempt to control it again.  
Still, she can't stop looking at Cris.

There are days when Joana hates her magic, when it weighs on her, growing cold and painting her insides gray. On those days, strangers avoid her, pulling their own magic closer to themselves while Joana’s withers.

The people she accidentally touches flinch away from her; scared of the feeling, as if something is missing. Joana walks away until she can’t stand any longer and remains in bed. She remembers how Eloy would come around, sit next to her, his hands resting on his knees while looking sad. Joana used to turn away from him.

Cris knows her for a few weeks when the magic starts to leave. It starts gradually: first, hiding deeper and deeper in her bones, somewhere she can’t reach or find, somewhere she can’t use it to see herself from different perspectives anymore but eventually it turns to stone and it’s as if she never had any in the first place. It makes her breathe quicker, her heart beat faster, trying frantically to find the magic. Each time, she thinks she will never find it again.

Cris visits Joana and usually, Joana would be able to fling the magic into the room, cast a wide net and see the way she looks from Cris’s perspective for a short moment. Now, she can only watch as Cris stares at her, thinking and reading. She takes a step closer to her. Joana instinctively takes a step back and presses her back to the wall.

“Should I leave?” Cris asks cautiously.

Joana shakes her head.

“I guess you’ll just have to deal with me coming onto your bed.” Cris moves to sit down on the bed.

Joana closes her eyes before she forces her tired voice to shape the words she should say. “My magic-“ she starts.

“Yeah. I can feel it.”

Cris isn’t even touching her. She shouldn’t be able to feel her magic. This time, Joana’s voice doesn’t need any help. “But it’s not there. It’s gone.”

Cris frowns. “It’s not gone. I can feel it”

Joana balls up her hands into fists. Cris takes them in hers, doesn’t flinch. Joana blinks. “But I can’t feel it. It’s not there. It's not mine"

“It’s here. It’s there. It's yours.” Cris sounds so sure as she squeezes Joana’s hands, no sign of her own magic, but maybe Joana is too tired and too confused to search for it. She decides she’ll believe Cris.

She falls asleep next to her.

Eloy once told her that touching her while she’s missing her magic is like being sucked into a void.

Joana thinks that it’s fitting. It’s what it feels like for her too, after all.

Joana gets to know Cris’s friends and learns where they keep their magic: Nora’s at the nape of her neck, where she puts her hand whenever she’s unsure; Viri holds hers in the palms of her hands, open and easy; Amira’s magic lights up her whole face, coming out whenever she grins; Eva carries hers behind her ear; Jorge’s scalp is full of magic, lighting up when he runs his fingers through her hair.

They all lose bits and pieces of their magic, carelessly scattering it wherever they go. Joana doesn’t know what it is they can do with theirs, she doesn’t ask, but she can see glittering flakes dissolve in the air when they all meet.

And then there’s Cris, who carries her magic right there in the tips of her fingers and never leaves a trace. Not even a spec. As if she keeps her magic on lockdown. She is careful with who she touches; where she puts her fingers. So careful that Joana wants to just take her hands and shake them. Just to see if Cris would still keep all that magic trapped within her.

Joana’s own magic encompasses her heart and clenches at the thought.

Joana’s magic always comes back slowly. It moves out of the crooks in her bones and crawls towards her heart. It takes days, yet Cris doesn’t seem to mind, and she continues to hold her hands nonetheless. There’s no magic bleeding over from Cris anymore, not since that time underneath the stars. Joana doesn’t mention it.

Once Joana’s magic is painting her insides bright colours once again, she uses it to see himself from Cris’s perspective. She stretches it out of her body and for a split second she is in Cris’s shoes looking at herself standing across from Cris. Her smile seems to light up the room. Then, she is pulled back into her own body.

Cris is staring at her with a raised eyebrow and has a look of a thousand questions on her face. “The next time you wanna do that, maybe just ask?”

“You felt that?”

“Don’t tell me you normally get away with that,” Cris snorts. “Taking over people’s eyes isn’t what I would call subtle.”

“What – that’s not – Cris, no one has ever caught me doing that.”

Cris shrugs. “They were probably just too polite to say anything.” She pulls her shoulders up and moves into herself a little.

Joana takes a step forward, putting her hands on her shoulders, and smiles at her. “I really doubt that.”

“Have you ever noticed Cris’s magic?” Joana asks Amira at some point.

Amira raises her eyebrows. “Girl, if you want to know about Cris’s magic maybe ask her.”

Joana nods. She has a point.

Cris doesn’t use magic at school. Where others flaunt their skills, she bends for every book she drops and picks it up with her hands, and when her locker doesn’t open she makes Joana use basic magic to open it for her. Once, Joana wants to ask why but Cris just smiles at her. “You're my personal servant,” she says and that makes Joana forget what she was going to ask because “Really, Cris, I’m offended.”

The first time Cris uses magic around Joana, Joana is pretty sure it’s an accident. Joana put out candles because – well, there was no reason not to. She notices that one of them dies out, before spontaneously lighting up again. Cris is barely looking at it, focused on the movie on her laptop screen in front of them, but Joana notices.

The next time, a window closes softly when Joana complains about being cold. Then, Joana’s charger turns up next to her when she’s searching for it. Cris never once concentrates on what she’s doing, always preoccupied with something else. Joana starts to wonder just how powerful Cris is.

“Do you dislike your magic?” Joana asks after they’ve known each other for a few months.

Cris blinks, taken back. “I mean, I don’t exactly love it.”  
“Why is that?”

“It’s rather exhausting,” Cris says, before kissing Joana. Joana can take a hint.

It’s Lucas, who finally lets more slip than he probably should. “Joana,” he says, when Joana walks into the flat that Cris will soon be moving out of to move in with her, “make your girlfriend stop the fucking hurricane in her room.”

“Trust me, my room at home looks like a mess, too,” Joana grins.

Lucas rolls his eyes. “Cute, but I’m talking about an actual hurricane. Good luck. I’m going out and only returning once she has her magic under control.”

Joana doesn’t know what to think when she knocks on her door. She doesn’t hear anything, so she opens the door carefully. It swings open to reveal Cris standing in the middle of a room that is full of boxes, a taken apart bed and a desk.

There is also a storm cloud above Cris.

Cris has her hands clenched in fists, looking up at it, and sighing loudly.

“Is this a bad time?” Joana asks.

Cris jumps, turning around. “Oh, fuck.”

“Is that – you?” Joana points at the storm cloud, closing the door behind her. The cloud roars and something that looks like lightning strikes through its middle.

“Obviously not, it’s a cloud,” Cris snaps. Joana holds her hands up and Cris sighs. “Sorry, I’m sorry, I’m just stressed and this hasn’t happened in a long time and” She pauses “it’s not my fault that you want to replay the memories of this fucking room now,” she finishes, directing the last part to the storm cloud.

“You talk to your magic?”

“Only when it’s being an asshole,”

Then, she waves her hands, balling them into fists, and presses her lips into a thin line. The power coming from her makes Joana take a step back as the cloud slowly grows smaller, roaring and flickering, before disappearing. As if it was never there.

“Okay,” Joana says.

Cris plops down on the floor, looking up at her slightly afraid. “Did I scare you?”

“No.” It’s not a lie and Cris seems to sense that.

“Good. It’s not going to happen again. Okay, it might, but usually it doesn’t, I have it under control.”

“Just exactly how powerful is your magic?” Joana comes closer, sitting down across from Cris.

Cris shrugs. “I’m not sure. I haven’t tried a lot of things.”

“Why not?”

Cris snorts. “Because it’s bad enough when I don’t try.”  
Joana reaches out a hand to lay it on Cris’s knee. Cris lets her. “You said you were stressed? Is it because of moving?”

“Yes, but it’s a good kind of stress. It’s just that my magic doesn’t get that sometimes and I was thinking of, like, the not so good things that I thought about in this room and the magic took that as an invitation to – well, you saw.” Cris sighs once again. She sounds tired.

"It’s amazing. You’re amazing.”

Upon hearing that, Cris looks up quickly. “What?”

“It’s unbelievable what you can do.” Joana doesn’t need to see herself from Cris’s perspective; she knows that she is radiating astonishment.

Cris’s mouth drops open, before a grin overtakes hier face. Joana can’t help but kiss her. She can feel Cris’s magic as it tingles against her lips.

“You know, there was another reason why I stayed in the basement when I first came to live with Lucas,” Cris says days later when they’re lying on their brand-new bed in their brand-new flat. Joana makes a quiet noise to keep Cris talking and strokes the palm of her hand. She can feel the warmth underneath her fingertips.

“I mean, yes, part of it was that they didn’t have any space for me yet. But the other thing was” – Cris stops for a second, while looking at the ceiling, and Joana waits – “the other thing was that I would have destroyed everything. I destroyed half the basement anyway.”

Joana fights to keep her voice neutral when she says, “With your magic?”

“Yeah,” Cris sighs. Joana hates how defeated she sounds. She doesn’t ask Cris to elaborate beyond that. She manages to put the pieces together herself, she can imagine how lost and hurt and alone Cris must have felt, her magic tearing out of her and bouncing off the walls of the basement, like a game of pinball. But instead, Joana takes a bit of her own magic and opens the window. Cris raises her eyebrows.

“I’m cold,” Joana says.

Cris looks at hed as if she’s stupid. The memories from before that left her face closed off make room for confusion. “Right,” Cris says. “How about you don’t open the window then.”

“Close it?” Joana asks, ignoring what Cris said.

Cris grumbles and pulls her elbow underneath her as she plans to get up. Joana tugs her back down to the bed. “But don’t leave,” she tells her. Her heart is hammering in her chest and she doesn’t know if Cris will understand and if she does whether she’ll like that – Cris rolls her eyes, but there’s a slight smile on her lips. She kisses Joana and Joana can hear the click of the window.

“See,” she says, watching Cris’s eyes carefully when Cris moves back again, “now you can use your magic to do this.”

“Close windows for you?” Cris seems sceptical.

“To be kind.” She pauses.

The next kiss Joana gets feels like Cris is trying to say things in which she can’t say out loud. Joana smiles into it.

On pink grass, Joana interlocks her fingers with Cris’s, her own magic starting to fade again, when she asks, “You said my magic isn’t gone when I can’t feel it. Where does it go?”

“Right here,” Cris says, squeezing Joana’s left arm. A distant flame flickers underneath Joana’s skin there.  
“Can’t you give me some of your magic?” Joana jokes, half-serious.

“No, but I can do this.” Cris pulls her into her arms and slowly, she can feel Cris’s fingertips burn through her denim jacket. The warmth spreads all over Joana’s body, embracing it.

“Show-off,” Joana mumbles against Cris’s neck.

“Shut up,” Cris whispers back.

Joana uses the last of her magic that she can access to blink herself high up above them. She pretends she can see fire shielding them from everything else.  
She comes back to her body to notice the sun beaming against Cris’s face and finds that she is fine with seeing just that for a while. Cris’s magic hugs her tighter.

**Author's Note:**

> They aren't that many fics for this version of skam or this couple which is really disappointing. I really love this couple


End file.
